FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Lavrov Blasts EU Attitude against Syria’s Reconstruction

April 24, 2018 (EIRNS)—At the opening of the third annual conference on Syrian reconstruction in Brussels today, the sponsoring European Union proposed to raise $6 billion, with the understood condition that for any of this money to go to government-controlled areas, Assad must go.

The EU position on reconstruction in Syria, reports Reuters, is that rebuilding destroyed cities such as Aleppo cannot start until powers involved in the “proxy war” back a peaceful transition of power away from Bashar al Assad.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has blasted the Western approach to Syria.

“Speaking on Syria’s restoration, we are very alarmed by the West’s loudly announced stance that they won’t provide any assistance to those areas which are under control of the Syrian government,”

Lavrov said from Beijing, where he was attending the meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Therefore, the Brussels conference is a litmus test.

“We will see how the conference’s organizers, most notably the European Union, and other Western countries and participants will outline their stance on the pressing tasks of restoring Syria’s economy.”

In any case, the Western regime-change boycott has not stopped the rebuilding of Aleppo. The Irish Times reported in October 2017 that electricity was being restored; water was flowing into homes, businesses and factories; automobile traffic was heavy, and hotels were busy with conferences and visiting delegations. There is still much work to be done in Aleppo, but life has clearly returned to the city. This is in contrast to Raqqa, which still lies in ruins six months after U.S.-backed Kurdish-dominated militias “liberated” that city from ISIS.